Ira Ham didn’t understand the big deal behind live-action role play games. A friend invited him to one during a gaming convention about 10 years ago, and Ham thought the quest to emerge from a convention room, victorious and in possession of a fictional gem, was cheesy.

Where he was supposed to hop across stepping stones, Ham saw some squares on a carpet.

Where an obstacle threatened his livelihood, he saw a black tarp.

“I thought that this was the stupidest thing imaginable,” Ham said.

But then he turned a corner, and a giant spider jumped out at him. He ran out of the room, face blanched.

“And I think to myself, ‘Why did I just run from a guy in a spider costume? Maybe there’s something to this,’” Ham said.

An IT professional by day, he quickly realized he enjoyed participating in these games because they gave him a chance to be a hero, to experiment with how imaginary events would play out in real life, he said. Ham began to participate in, and even run, live action games like the one he mocked.

Fast forward to this week, and Ham is the chairman for the fourth annual Wyrd Con, an interactive storytelling convention that he founded in Costa Mesa. “Wyrd” is an Old English reference from a live action game Ham created that lasted four years, he said.

From Thursday through Sunday, the Hilton Orange County/Costa Mesa will host about 400 people who are looking to immerse themselves in more than a dozen of these interactive games and stories.

Ham created Wyrd Con because he realized that a lot of other people were creating experiences and new ways of storytelling, but they weren’t sharing their ideas – people in media thought the way to successfully engage audiences was through just live action, or just online engagement.

Attendees can participate in games that span the whole weekend, in which they have to find clues around the hotel to solve puzzles, or they can play games for an hour or two, like the one set in the world of a Star Wars cantina.

This year, Wyrd Con received dozens of submissions for possible experiences, and accommodated almost all of them, said Mitch Meconi, the director of live events for the convention.

Usually a designer creates the experience by creating a character, a world, and a set of rules. People sign up to be a part of the event, and they are given the rules and what their character should generally focus on. After that, it’s up to the participants to move the story along or solve the puzzle, and the designer just has to maintain the integrity of the story, Ham said.

By Tuesday, repeat convention attendee Renee Hammer had already figured out what games she was going to be a part of, and her weekend is fully booked.

“On a normal weekend I would be doing errands,” Hammer said. “But for this weekend I get to …battle zombies in a wasteland.”

Hammer’s last Wyrd Con was 2011, where during her favorite game she donned the persona of a 1940’s private eye, but in a tiki bar in purgatory. People were dressed how angels and demons would dress in a tiki bar, she said.

“You get to be a part of the story. It’s not like you’re watching a movie or playing a video game,” Hammer said. “When you walk into (the game) it’s a blank canvas. By the end of it it’s a rich world.”

Hammer, like many other conference attendees, is also interested in learning how to push the boundaries of traditional storytelling.

She’ll be able to do this at the convention, where there are workshops and panels on topics like creating your own language, a weapon-making seminar and using the internet to tell stories.

Exploring these concepts aren’t just a hobby for a lot of people, Ham said. People can create a business around using live action to role play, or they can increase the success of a movie or TV show using transmedia – basically, anything that pushes a story beyond its original inception. He used the mainstream example of Pottermore, a website that allows fans of the Harry Potter series to create identities within the world of the novels, and solve puzzles to unlock new parts of that world.

“Just absorbing a story isn’t enough,” Ham said. “To make a story memorable you have to interact with it.”

In today’s media landscape, the people exploring a hotel solving puzzles in costume aren’t nerds who are playing silly games, Ham said – they’re the future of successful entertainment.

Daily passes to Wyrd Con are available for $40 and a weekend pass costs $120. The convention runs from Thursday – Sunday at the Hilton Orange County/Costa Mesa.

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